Should Your Business Use Mobile Ads?

If you’re like most entrepreneurs, you’re not sure whether mobile ads are worth the investment. While it seems like everybody and their grandmothers can’t add two plus two without the assistance of a smartphone these days, mobile ads have a mixed history.

Before you consider launching a mobile advertising campaign, obtain a solid grasp on what mobile ads are, their unique advantages and if the benefits outweigh the costs.

What Makes Mobile Ads Different

Mobile ads generally come in the same varieties as traditional online ads: some are graphical and some are text-based. Because most mobile ads appear in apps and mobile searches (especially map searches), the amount of text and graphics available for mobile ads is very limited. And mobile advertising platforms offer far fewer ad placements than their desktop platform counterparts.

While this advertising format clearly has its limitations, the location-based advertising allow you to reach potential customers as they’re wandering around your business’s neighborhood and searching for businesses in your industry. If you own a storefront that can capitalize on foot traffic, mobile ads could be a boon for your business.

Mobile Ads Performance and Results

Aside from making advertisers money, mobile ads are generating worthwhile leads for some businesses. Recent Venturebeat reports revealed smartphone pay-per-click (PPC) ads have achieved a higher click-through rate and lower cost than PPC ads appearing on tablets and smartphones. Most successful campaigns take place on Google’s and Facebook’s mobile advertising platforms.

According to Techcrunch, an experiment with Facebook mobile Sponsored Stories turned out 13.7 times the click-throughs than its desktop ad counterpart’s. T-Mobile used Google’s mobile search ads to lead 162,000 consumers to visiting T-Mobile’s website within a month’s time. But, like a diet program, results may not be typical.

Determining if Mobile Ads Are Right for Your Business

Every marketing program comes with its inherent difficulties and disadvantages. But mobile ads may be worth the risk if you know (or are reasonability certain) that your customers use smartphones and your business:

Make sure you run the ads for a reasonable timeframe like 90 days to gather plenty of data for analysis. You may want to run Google and Facebook campaigns simultaneously to see if one platform outperforms the other.

Don’t expect mobile ads to completely change your online advertising strategy. But do expect them to play a much bigger role as Americans continually conduct more work and play on their smartphones and tablets.

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